2011 Holiday Letter

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Here's your two favorite crazies from the holiday party at the Ung's house last Christmas.

Yes, a picture from last year's festivities, our schedule this holiday season hasn't allowed for much. In the last few months we've been preparing from Mom and Todd to come out for Christmas. YAY! We're so excited! This meant saying good-bye to our old grandpa green couch and getting a sleeper sofa so we can all crash together. We sort of love the new couch. Its funky plaid pattern, suits us well. If you're looking for an excuse to come to Seattle, the couch is worth it. Ha!

Seriously, we've both been working on coming back from Never Never Land which has had us away from all the fun. 

Peter Pan, uhm... Jonno has been preparing for the police officer exams and took his written test a few weekends ago. He scored very high.  We're all super proud of him. You should see him! He's so fit as he has been preparing for the physical exam since September! He'll take that (and no doubt rock it!) in the coming weeks.

Wendy... nooo Mia (that's me and this is where I'll stop sounding crazy by referring to myself in the third person) has been preparing to go back to school. In May I will FINALLY graduate from KU. I'm taking two classes online from KU, one class and a research project at Shoreline here in Seattle. We're still hammering out the details of my project and I'm not going to say another word so I don't jinx it!

The whole back to school thing means I'll be saying goodbye to my classroom at BH to work part-time, as school allows. This is totally a leap of faith, but I'm confident God won't let me fall (too hard)!

The Lord has been so good to us this year, for example...

Here's a picture from Mom's graduation this year!  I was able to go home to celebrate this honor with her!  I'm so proud of my role model!  She received one of the few awards from her school and graduated with Honors.

We did some travelling around our neighbor to the south this year, Oregon.

This is me during our last breakfast at Sunriver Resort for our Valentine's Day Trip.

In February we made good on our delayed 2010 birthday trip and went to the Mt. Hood National Forest, Bagby Hot Springs, and the Sunriver Resort Area.  The drive there was spent with me pointing and saying "Look at THAT!" and "Oh my gosh! So beautiful!" about every 5 feet.  We spent a lot of time at the resort enjoying their saltwater pool (We've got to get one of those!) and the hiking trails.  We hiked through part of the national forest to enjoy the hot springs.  The area was so peaceful. 

In June we celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary by staying at the Twilight famous, View Point Inn.  During the evenings, dinner mostly (yum!) we enjoyed the Inn and by day we enjoyed the sights of the Columbia Gorge River area.  We really enjoyed the falls whose views rivaled the scenery in Hawaii (at least we thought so!)

Here's Jonno at the base of  Latourell Falls.  When he hiked back up to me he was soaking and "Ooo That's cold!"

Here's the two of us at Multnomah Falls.  Obviously one of us didn't dress appropriately for hiking that day...

For the 4th of July holiday Patty and Dennis made a trip out to see us!  What a good time we had because Jonno and I love playing tourist too.  We love having visitors!  We were able to take the "kids" all over Seattle and to some places outside of the city when we'd had enough of the traffic (so easy to do here!).

Here are the kids at a little park off of Lake Union in Fremont.  Don't they make a handsome group?!

In August my mom and I took a road trip from Kansas City to Seattle.  Here's the two of us acting crazy and we hadn't left the state yet...  

We had a blast bonding over cheap hotels, Maroon 5's "Moves like Jagger" and seeing a moose for the day trip we took to Yellowstone.

Mom stayed with Jonno and I while she prepared for her nursing exams, but of course we couldn't let her study the WHOLE time.

We rented a surrey on Alki Beach and laughed our faces off after discovering I can't drive it either.

We took her to our favorite brunch place, Portage Bay.  They know how desperate Seattlites are for coffee so they give it to you while you're waiting for table.

Throughout the year we've been able to take in Seattle's art and music scene.  We've enjoyed Les Miserables at the 5th Avenue (so much we got season tickets!), the Aladdin preview night at the 5th Avenue, The Seattle Rock Orchestra's Radiohead Night, and the Frames.  Last Christmas Jonno and I, trying to take the emphasis off stuff in our life, got each other experiences.  I got Jonno tickets to see Cash'd Out a Johnny Cash cover band.  We had a good time... as you can tell.

And the pinnacle of our year... Disneyland!  Our lives will never be the same!

"Ahhh!  We're dying from the joy in our bursting hearts!"

"Mia get off the phone!  We have to go meet Mickey Mouse for the 50th time!" 

Mom and Todd took us for our birthdays and the grins from ear to ear have yet to leave our faces.  We're looking forward to living going there again, hopefully in May, which is not soon enough!


The year's been good to us, thanks to God.  We were able to help out at church some this year. We sponsored a couple going through RCIA and helped out with the Young Adult Group.  St. Benedict's has been a nice place church home for us!

We've had a year of learning how delicious food from the Ballard Farmer's Market is, learning more about local wines, tasting and enjoying Jonno's smoked meats (brisket to DIE for!), mastering our gluten-free baking, falling in love with Bellingham, discovering we might be able to do this whole kid thing, and realizing that biking is ton of fun and we can't wait until they open the trail near our place again!

What we're looking forward to in 2012:

1. More visits from friends and family.
2. More Disneyland.
3. More Epic Battle of the Orange Squishy Chair by Romeo and Nickls (our dogs)
4. More fun.
5. More time in church activities as life slows down.

With Love, 

Mia, Jonno,  Romeo, and Nickls